Some Interesting News

Hey guys,
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Several of you don’t know this, but a few years ago I used to have this podcast going. It was very informal, and not too well put together – I had a podcast feed, and a page, and I think a feedback form but that’s about it. The topic of the podcast, as well as its schedule, changed quite often. I eventually stopped doing that podcast, because I got burnt out on it. I also think I was younger, busier, less sure, etc, so I never really planned episodes and ended up making commitments I couldn’t really keep up with.
However, I am trying the podcast thing again. Over these last couple years, I’ve been watching lets plays of games on Youtube, and listening to fellow more professional blind peoples’ streams. While I will not pretend to be professional, (I want a laid back and chill but still somewhat structured cast), I will have it a lot more put together than its predecessor.
The first Episode will be on November 1. I will attempt to do an audio stream of it, combined with a live chat room, but this may or may not be possible. If not, I’ll still record and post it as normal.
I invite you to visit the podcast page, linked below. There I have posted the description of the podcast/my goal with it, as well as a “next planned episode” section which will detail what I will be doing in the next episode and when it will be created. There is also a feedback form which I encourage anyone interested in the podcast to use to suggest, comment, criticize, or just chat about an episode or the podcast in general. I intend this podcast to be as listener-driven and communicative as it is controlled by me. My listeners are what will keep this thing going, so I believe they deserve excellent treatment. I can say I do all the work but in truth, it’ll be you guys taking 30 minutes or more out of your day to listen and interact with the cast that’ll keep it going for real.
Finally, you guys who read the blog know I never ask for money on this site. I blog because I love to blog (okay I’ve been slipping, but still). I don’t believe that the content I put here, stories or otherwise, is worth asking that people fork over money to view it. However, I have added a donate button to the podcast page. Whatever is paid here will go to the cost of this site or the streaming server, or will give me, a college student, less of a likelihood to see a two-digit bank balance. My policy still stands though: I don’t expect to be paid or donated to. If I did, the button would be to buy episodes, not to voluntarily donate. This podcast is not money driven – so while I’ll mention the donate button briefly to remind people of its existence once or twice in an episode, I will not pressure anyone to use it. You donate to me if you feel like it, found the blog or a podcast good enough to warrant it, think I deserve it, whatever. If you don’t though, we’re still cool. You’re no less of a person. šŸ™‚
That out of the way, This is the podcast page. I’m optimistic about this podcast, and generally just can’t wait to chat with people and have fun!
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
Ps. Life related blog post in a few days.

Return to Normalcy

Hey guys,
Steve here.

I really need to stop doing this. Over the last 50 days or however long it has been, this blog acquired 10 new followers. I’m guessing they followed me in hopes that they’d see future posts from me, which I have not done a good job of producing.

I remember a time when I’d blog every 4 to 10 days, because I didn’t try to stick to a certain topic. Recently, though, I’ve found myself unintentionally gearing towards one subject, game development. While I enjoy game development, quite fervently might I add, it was not my intention for this blog to become solely based on that. This does not
mean the end of my technical rants and detailed game idea postings; those will still occur, but it’s time
this blog return to the way it was before, when I didn’t attempt to bind myself to one particular
subject.

Because it’s been so long since my last post, I have a lot to say, but I’ll try to separate it into
multiple posts so I’m not talking about five different things in one. But as a general, perhaps five word
summary, the last month and 1/whatever was good… well… great.

My seventeenth birthday has already passed. Unfortunately, due to my attempt at binding myself
to one blogging subject, I didn’t post anything then; and when I don’t post something on such a grand
holiday, you know something’s not right. That said, it was one of the greatest birthdays I’ve had. I
didn’t have a party, but I will say this. The people I spent it with made it better for me than any party
idea I could’ve come up with myself, and to be honest I didn’t want one.

Aside from that, there hasn’t been much going on worth mentioning. This Friday, though, I am
traveling out of state for a goal ball tournament for the first time, something I’m both excited and
nervous about. I am not traveling with a specific team; I’m not sure whether or not I’ve been assigned
one. But here in Texas, our goal ball practices are small, so we don’t have a fully developed team of
men. I guess this one is going to be quite an adventure though.

In other news, I’ve been alternating in between my 3 projects. I actually did pull out Matt the Terrorist’s source code again, making some significant changes which I’ll discuss in a later post. I’ve also been working on Breakout, and at the moment I’m attempting to integrate a bonus level which requires the user to control multiple balls at once. I’ll let you all know how that turns out in the next post as well. But for now, I’m wrapping it up. I’ll be back after
the tournament.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Rewrites and an Audio Demo

Hey guys,
Steve here.

There I go again, with the whole not blogging for over a month thing. The problem is, I have been wanting to blog for at least the last week and a half… but then again it might be better that I waited this long to because some important things have happened recently that I would prefer to have gone in this post.

As I’m sure you could tell by the steady decline of enthusiasm I displayed towards S Quad Racing, and the increasing lack of work being done on it, I was definitely becoming unhappy with it. Since I’d started working on it so early, I didn’t know much about the language I started coding it in, causing me to do numerous things the wrong way, something I wouldn’t find out until the game really started taking off. By November, when I was trying to really ramp up the features, I realized that my code was pretty much just patched together, close-ended, buggy, and virtually unusable.

So, the last week of Christmas break, I finally decided to rewrite the entire game. There were still parts I copied from the old version, such as ambiance, playlist, checkpoint, and obstacle support, but everything else was completely scrapped.

After just a week of coding, I had a fully functional game. And when I gave it to my testing team, the bugs they found were only minor, easy to fix ones that usually resulted from forgotten or wrongly written lines of code. I’ve spent the last week fixing those, leaving only some minor bugs I just found out today. But thankfully, those that are occurring now are not the irreparable ones found in the old version, as I am more able to fix them now that I have a workable code base.

In other news, S Quad Racing is not the only project receiving a rewrite. Matt the Terrorist’s engine is receiving a rewrite as well, going from a 2d side scrolling game to 3d. The code base for this was not mangled like the old S Quad Racing, however it didn’t really have much in the way of flexibility, I.E. Implementing 3d support into it would have been next to impossible due to the y coordinate being used for up and down movement among other things.

Plus, since this game is not completely user friendly due to the keyboard layout, –we have keys for movement for forward, backward, left, right, up, and down, there are two keys (one for the left arm and one for the right), plus whatever keys will need to be added in future, I thought to add a keyboard configuration option. The way the keys will work in this new version are w a s and d for directional movement, r and f for up and down, (climbing ladders and controlling your jet pack), left and right shift being held down for the respective arms, enter to throw items, i to deposit them into inventory, and space to place. However, due to the complaints that will likely come about due to this rather odd key configuration, I’m working on a way for all aforementioned keys to be customized.

Aside from that, I’m really interested to see how three dimensional building will turn out in an audio only game. I don’t suspect it will be different from other audio games in terms of navigation, but we’ll just have to see, since the player will actually be constructing 3d structures without being able to feel or have them described to them.

That concludes tonight’s post, mostly anyway. Since I promised audio demos, I’ll provide this one for S Quad Racing since the Matt the Terrorist engine test is not in much of a playable state at the moment. Enjoy.

Play

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Another Small Release and a Few Updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I said I’d have a surprise for you all, and that was not an empty promise.
Over the last week, I’ve been sporadically coding on a little game, one which is similar to the classic Pong, but with quite a few twists. And not only did I create this game, but I included the source code, which is heavily commented, so that anyone interested could have a look at how games are actually coded in Pure Basic.
Similar to flamity flame, you are placed upon a side scrolling grid that is twenty squares wide. Your goal in this game, however, is to run after the ball and hit it to prevent it from hitting the ground.
To accomplish this task, you are given a paddle, which you will swing once you are beneath the ball and it is low enough to hit because, after all, you can only reach so far.
Since the ball can go just about anywhere when you hit it, it is impossible to develop much of a strategy. Plus, the game gets difficult, rather quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the likelihood of you lasting over two minutes is nearly zero.
Fortunately, though, there is help. Firstly, you don’t really have to worry about centering yourself exactly beneath the ball; you will hear a beep when you are centered. Secondly, there are platforms. If you are not near the ball when it is coming down, and it happens to be above a platform, it will bounce off of it rather than making the journey to the ground.
Initially, you start out with three platforms, spaced out evenly in intervals of five. However, as you play, additional platforms will spawn, though considering the level of difficulty in the game it’s likely you’ll only get one, if any, platform spawns before the end of the game.
While the fact that more platforms will spawn might enspire you to work your hardest, there is one thing to bear in mind about platforms–they are not the nutral, happy-to-help objects you might think of them to be. When the ball bounces off of a platform, it will rebound faster, and you must work a lot faster to get to, and hit the ball. This affect is called catapult, and only lasts 3 to 10 seconds after the ball bounces off of a platform. So while it is true that platforms can be a life saver, you might want to avoid letting the ball hit them as much as possible, otherwise you’re going to lose more than you gain.
Well, if you’re interested, you can Click here to download it.
Also, I have recorded an audio demonstration, which you can listen to below.

There are a few things I might change, such as how quickly the game gets hard, and the interval between platform spawns.
In other news, I haven’t worked much on S Quad racing, in fact I’ll confess I didn’t work on it at all this week. I was mainly focused on coding the game released in this post, which I named “Bouncy Ball” because I was too bored to name it anything else, to code something as complex as S Quad Racing. I probably won’t open it up tonight either, as I’m rather tired, but hopefully tomorroww I’ll get back to work. I think that before I implement dynamic weather, ambiance, and cheering into the creation of tracks, I’ll go ahead and see what I can do about implementing gears, as that is a task that I’ve put off for several weeks now but needs to be done.
Well, that’s about all I have to report. I’ll blog again later this week. As far as pod casting goes, I’m not quite sure. I want to do an episode tomorrow, but we all know me. So who actually knows–but hopefully tomorrow.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

An Audio Editing Experiment and Some Updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I know it’s been a bit longer than ten days since my last post to this blog, and I’m sorry about that. Fortunately, this period of extended silence has not been counterproductive.
First of all, I generated an audio file. This was originally supposed to be an oscillation of about fifty different sound waves going up and down the frequency scale–an attempt to annoy people. However, after some heavy editing, and by that I mean using eighty percent of the audio affects in audacity, I was able to turn it into… a “Sci-phi frequency storm gone bad!”

I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying, but it’s one of the most captivating things you’ll ever listen to! That is, if you actually listen to it.
Moving on, after all that work I did on S Quad racing last week, I mostly fixed the winning system. It is now possible to win races and lose them respectively, that is, if you only race with one opponent. Even though I haven’t figured out why the game won’t work properly with multiple opponents, I will be releasing an audio demo by Wednesday that demonstrates a fully working race!
Also on the subject of gaming, I returned to the swamp universe last week, though I haven’t been quite as addicted as I was in the past. Don’t get me wrong, Swamp is still by far the best game I’ve ever played, but I for one don’t want to end up having to renew my account at the same time I pay for the website, and not to mention I have a game to code.
By the way, speaking of games to code, I might just have a small surprise in the works. This is far less substantial than S Quad Racing, but, judging by your reactions to Flamity Flame, it has the potential to get quite a few of you hooked for several minutes, or even hours, perhaps. Stay tuned!
That concludes the posting for tonight. Stay tuned for updates and/or releases on that “secret surprise,” and be looking out for the next podcast episode, which might just be my demonstration of Psycho Strike, the new Grand Theft Auto-like rpg from VG Storm and Blastbay Studios.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

A Great Week of Bringing Poems to Life and Other Things

Hey guys,
Steve here.
You’re not going to believe this! It turns out that “Flamity Flame the Lame Audio Game,” the poem I wrote and published on last Wednesday’s blog post, has become…exactly what it talks about–an audio game!
Though I’ve indeed brought this game to reality, it is a twisted one; the audio game is not exactly as it was depicted in the poem. Nonetheless, I tried to structure it around most of the rules outlined therein, so that the result was mostly as expected: You are placed on a game board, James is there as well, he does not make a sound, and you must kill him.
However, I strayed a bit from the main idea. James is able to shoot back, if you give him time to anyway. When you square up with him, he is raising up his gun, and you’d better fire like crazy before he has time to. However, if you’re too slow to fire enough shots to take him down, as is likely to be the case, it will be necessary to step to the left or right one time to get out of the line of fire, and take a small 5 second break or so, before moving back to where James is and proceeding to blast him to oblivion. This system helps to test one’s quick thinking and reflexive skills, while also laying the foundations for an action packed, quick paced arcade style shooter game, something that was definitely not described in the poem.
Secondly, rather than killing James once, there are five levels; James has five lives; four less than your average cat, four greater than your average James. In each of these unfortunate, short lives, James’s is more angry than in previous ones. Proceeding the burning out of one of James’s lives, you will advance a level, and hear a threat. As you achieve higher levels, you will notice that these comments grow more angry and bloodthirsty. This is only the precursor to a level filled with faster shots from James that could easily slice off a significant chunk of health, and result in your quick and almost, and I emphasize almost, painless death.
There is some good news for you, though. Unlike poor old, slow, angry James who cannot actually walk, You can move away from him safely and confide in the fact that he won’t follow. Also, though your health does not reset following the start of a new level, you’ll notice that it takes less shots to kill James in the higher levels; though the main goal in those levels is still to kill James, the underlying goal is to time your attacks so that James doesn’t have time to shoot back, a task that can be quite daunting.
Another perk is that unlike James, the firing time limit on your gun is not directly set in the game; this means that you will be able to fire as fast as you can press the space bar. So while the game gets increasingly challenging, there are several constant factors that place the game mostly in your favor.
For the first time, I actually have a reward for those of you who just read that–a download link! Since Flamity Flame was such a small project, it is already released, and can be Downloaded from this link.
In the package, I’ve included both a documentation, and an audio strategy demo, and I recommend that you have a look at both.
Moving away from Flamity flame, I suppose I’ll include a short update on my life, by that I mean a quick summary, since the previous part of this post went a lot longer than I intended it to.
My birthday went exactly as I thought it would. I overloaded on some great food, relaxed, and went to school, that list of events being in order from most to least important. The only unexpected occurrence, was that I bought a space upgrade for the blog, meaning that instead of having to upload pod casts and such to Drop Box, I can now upload those files to my blog, and have been in the process of doing so. Since I transferred pod casts first, both the feed and page work, though for those of you who are subscribed to the feed you might be asked to download all episodes again.
As for the weekend, there’s not much to say there. My sister and dad were out of town, so it was just me and my mom. I basically spent the weekend relaxing, eating junk food, and then Sunday we were at church all day. Also, I recorded a podcast on Death Match A New Beginning, and had the privilege of having Danny on the podcast over Skype. You should seriously listen to it.
That concludes this quite lengthy post. Enjoy the new little game, and Happy Flaming!
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

An Exciting Steve Day Celebration Post!

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Yes, I posted yesterday, and I know that I had decided upon a four to ten day blogging routine at the beginning of the year. However, it has become an unofficial tradition to post a little something on the night of my birthday. I don’t know why, but it’s happened every year. And don’t worry, you’re gonna love this one!

a little poem

I’ve been wanting to share this with you since I first came up with it on Saturday, but didn’t have enough time Yesterday morning to do so. So here it is. Notice the rhythm I use.
I remember the day,
when I dared to play,
an audio game,
that was very lame.
The audio game,
that was very lame,
that I dared to play,
had a stupid name.
The name of the game,
was Flamity Flame,
and Flamity Flame,
was such a horrible game.
Because in Flamity Flame,
The goal of the game,
was to attempt to kill,
a man known as James.
Now what made this game,
so very lame,
Is the fact that James,
had no sound at which to Aim.
And what kind of game,
that is audio by claim,
has a guy named James,
at whom you cannot Aim?
So to this day,
I don’t know who to blame,
but all I can say,
they made a terrible game!

a declaration of independence rendition for the blind

Note: this is a project my sister had to do for English class.
Also note: source of the end of it: the actual declaration. I put this so we don’t run into copyright issues. Again, the end of this declaration was copied from the origional.
There comes a time in every personā€™s life when one realizes that they
were not in fact made ā€œperfectā€; As we age we learn that we have to
figure this world out on our own. This is not to say that God is not
there to guide us, but we are limited by our fears and lack of
knowledge. And the situation is exacerbated when one has a disability.
One is forced to shape their life around their disability. They are
forced to live by different standards than the ā€œnormalā€ ones. And
while we learn to manage, there are still the harsh realities that
those with disabilities must face, that those without a disability do
not. To narrow it down, the blind are forced to learn to cope, and
navigate the world.
In reality, the blind are, at times, viewed as less than the
sighted. And because of this, certain rights are taken from us. The
right to be seen and not immediately judged, the right to be
considered ā€œnormalā€, and the right to be treated with respect are only
a few of the rights taken away from us. On top of the rights denied to
us, we also face many struggles that could be easily resolved if only
the sighted tried.
Firstly, architects do not take the needs of the blind into
consideration. We are forced to navigate around poles and columns,
that not only confuse us, but are a serious hazard.
Secondly, Any sighted person with a knack for decorating, that seems
to believe that fake plants and glass vases and figurines make nice
decor, have no respect or consideration for the people who are not
able to see and therefor find these needless decorations as dangerous
and as an irritant.
And thirdly, manufacturers who do not braille their products, as most
manufacturers fail to do, have absolutely no respect for the blind,
and are only losing customers. If a blind person cannot read the
labels on a product, we will not buy it.
There is room for improvement in all of these matters. For centuries
we have fought for the rights and accommodations that we deserve, and
that the sighted have. And for centuries, these pleas have been
ignored, or viewed as unimportant. And, here, we are once again asking
the sighted community to simply take a step back and take us into
consideration. We have made compromises, and we have relented to
letting them get away with ignoring our natural rights as humans. Yet,
they have been deaf to our struggles and needs. We must, therefor,
continue to fight for what should already be ours. We will be heard.
We will not let this world turn against the blind community. We,
therefore, the Representatives of the blind community, Assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of
the blind populace, solemnly publish and declare, us, as, human
beings, are, and of Right ought to be respected and taken into
consideration; that we are Absolved from all unjust acts committed by
the sighted; and that as a respected and valued people, we are granted
the same rights and luxuries as the sighted; And for the support of
this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes
and our sacred Honor.

Finally, a good old set of updates!

My birthday was definitely great, despite it being a school day. I had plenty to eat, and an overall good day. There were even a few funny incidents:
So I was eating M&MS in Spanish class, because I was like “it’s my birthday so I’m gonna eat these, because the teacher won’t get on to me for it.” Anyways, someone saw me eating them, and asked for one.
“What do you say?” I asked them.
“May I please, have some M&MS?”
“no… that’s not right. Happy…”
“Happy birthday!”
Of course I gave her some, and then I guess more people in the class saw and heard that because the whole class started singing to me! Lol! And the bad thing is,
Oh yes the bad bad thing,
I only gave them to like 4 people. šŸ˜€
In all seriousness, though, I did have a wonderful blessed day. I hope you all did as well! Also, I got a space upgrade for the website, meaning no more Drop Box imposed space limits–We won’t have to deal with them for a long time! Currently, I’m in the process of transfering all files from dropbox to wordpress. I will let you know when I finish that.

a few notes

  • just in case you wanted to know, the last person I talked to before I turned 16 (3:01 PM) was god. The first people I talked to as a 16 year old were those on my facebook friends list!
  • My birthday falls on National Make Up Your Own Holiday Day! No, that’s not why I came up with Steve Eve and Steve Day, that was purely coincidental, which is why I’m telling you this in the first place.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I hope you all have a wonderful blessed day, and weekend. Come on, it’s my birthday! Just grant this wish for me!
Oh yes, and also, just this once, I ask that if you like this post, please follow my blog and share this to your social media. Also please hit the like button on this post. And be sure to tell all your friends and family about Steve Eve and Steve Day so they will be ready for it next year!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve, the man who made the awesome Steve Day and Steve Eve holidays happen!

Site Updates and Exciting News

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Well the last few days were good, in contrast to the period of time before last weekā€™s post. Though itā€™s only been a few days and obviously not a whole lot of things has happened, Iā€™m posting this because I do have a few things to tell you aboutā€”and some of those are very important.
Well to start things off, Iā€™ll be going to D Now this weekend. It was a last minute dealā€”on Thursday, the friend I go with called me, and asked if I wanted to go this year. I think that things will be a bit different this year than they were in past years, but Iā€™ll let you know. At any rate, Iā€™m looking forward to D Now, and also to having next Monday off of school.
In other news, alter Aeon was a big part of my life for the past week. So far, Iā€™ve spent almost 12 hours total playing the game, but thatā€™s still not close to the 72 hours I accumulated on swamp during an 11 day period back in 2013 and early 2014. I have a good feeling that Iā€™ll be addicted to this game for quite a while, so expect to hear more about Alter Aeon in the future; thereā€™s so much to do, that I donā€™t think Iā€™ll ever run out of new places to explore, story to read, and monsters to fight.
As a result of this Alter Aeon, I havenā€™t read much, so Iā€™m still on Xenocide: Ender Wiggin #3. Nonetheless, I still read some, and have come to find that said book is highly philosophical. Itā€™s a great book, but the amount of philosophy, mainly regarding evolution, the beginning of civilization etc., makes my head spin.
Moving on, I did something I havenā€™t done in a long timeā€” changed up the site a little bit. Since I donā€™t create much in the way of software, but mostly create game books and swamp campaigns, I renamed the software page to computer creations. Of course, if I actually decide to create and publish some software, Iā€™ll put it there, but you can also find game books such as the Stranded series there, and swamp campaigns such as twisted egg hunt, sniping mania and some others.
As you know, Iā€™ve done quite a few podcasts, and 31 episodes of a podcast on one page is quite a bit. So, Iā€™ve decided to organize the podcasts by year of releaseā€”if you visit the podcasts page, youā€™ll see 3 optionsā€”podcasts from 2015, 2014, and 2013. I thought this organization would make it easier for you to find the episode of the cast that you want to listen to.
On a related note, Iā€™m finally back on schedule with the Steven D podcast. I didnā€™t release ep 31 last Sunday because I was feeling bad, and when I actually tried to record the podcast a few times last week, all attempts failed due to technological difficulties, so I decided to wait until yesterday to record it. At any rate, weā€™re back on schedule now, and if you like RS Games, or want to hear about it then stay in tune for next weekā€™s episode.
That concludes todayā€™s post. If anything interesting pops up this week, Iā€™ll blog on Friday, but otherwise expect another post sometime next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

a pleasant week

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I know I know. I’m definitely not the creative sort when it comes to blog post titles… but to my defense, that’s really what most of them have been about–weeks of my life, right? Anyhow, it is true, I’ve had quite a pleasant week. First of all, I got away with yet another semi-stress free week of school, with one big exception–I found out that I made a 35 on my most recent math checkpoint, so as you can probably infer I wasn’t really happy about that. Thankfully, however, I went to tutoring and got the problem solved, and as progress reports are coming out very soon, I’m hoping that test grade won’t cause me to fail. Another not so good thing that happened is that I was feeling pretty bad for a few days last week, a cold or something, but I am, and have been, feeling better since Sunday.
Moving on to more pleasant things, I’m really enjoying reading about Ender Wiggin; it’s fascinating. It is the most Sci-Fi book series I’ve ever read. For one thing, the first and second books were set 3000 years apart, and Ender Wiggin, the main character, is still around. It is something to do with relativity or something; he travels by star ship to different worlds, and he’s able to travel at the speed of light, so I guess time passes differently for him. I’m not really sure how such a thing is possible, or how science could possibly support that theory, but it’s an interesting concept, all the more reason I’ve come to like these books so much. While 22 years can pass for us, it can only feel like a week or so for Ender while he’s traveling at the speed of light.
Aside from books and school and the like, I’ve done more gaming, though not very much of it. Since this week’s podcast episode is over Shades of Doom, I had to download and play it, and of course it’s another good one. This game is pretty old, but some one suggested it for me, so I went ahead and demonstrated it. Apparently, for those of you who are familiar with such things, Shades of Doom is the first Audio FPS, contrary to my thought that it was Audioquake, a game I really don’t know about.
As for letting you hear me play Minuet, the pretty easy first song I’ve ever learned on piano, I haven’t forgotten. that is to be on this week’s podcast.
OK. I’ll quit stalling and just admit it. I haven’t yet done the episode. Just as I was getting ready to do it last night, I had to do a chore, then take some medicine that would help me sleep better, since I’m still a bit congested, so I couldn’t really do the podcast. I know, that’s not really a valid excuse since I could’ve done it earlier, but still. That’s what prevented me from doing at the usual time I record, around 9 when the house is quieter and I’m less likely to have disruptions.
Anyway, to end this post, I found out about Windows 10, the new release Microsoft will be coming out with. I’ve never in my time of using computers thought that I’d hear Microsoft say that they would be making a new web browser, rather than the old internet explorer we’re all so accustomed to. IE will still be shipped with Windows, though. Also I heard they’ll be implementing some sort of holographic technology? Man, sometimes, I wish I could see. Anyways, the link to the article I read is:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/21/technology/windows-10/index.html
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. Please be on the look out for the musically doomed podcast episode…
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

2015, A New and Better Year

Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s 2015 already, something I find hard to believe. Though another year has come and gone, I don’t feel the necessity to write up a stats report, mainly due to the fact that writing such a report is quite tedious, and not really worth my time. However, one thing I will say, is that I only published 50 posts on this blog in 2014. That’s not only 65 less than the amount of posts published in 2013, but it also meant that 315 days of last year came and went without one single word from me.
With the new year, I plan to change that though. If I can help it, there will be no 46 day long gaps between posts, no more of those 3 and a half week late pod casts. Though I’ve always been a bit unreliable as far as podcast scheduling goes, it got way out of hand recently. Also, when reading through my posts from 2013 and early last year, I realized how much of a total slacker I’ve been recently. Posting once a month has had a profound affect on my connection with you guys, my readers, and it’s ended up resulting in my posts being vague summaries of a vast time period that, by the time I’d finally sit down to write, I’d forgotten nearly 75% of.
So starting now, I’ll once again focus on a 4 to 10 day blogging routine, such as the one I had in place around this time last year. I’m looking forward to this upcoming year, and the interesting things I’ll be able to blog about.
Anyways, that aside, I’ve had a great last week of Christmas vacation. I attended a couple of family functions, played games, stuffed my face full of candy, and shoved all thoughts of school out of my mind. In fact, the only learning I’ve done this week has been strictly piano related, and the only book I’ve read this week is the Blood of Olympus, the fifth book in the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. As for my new year celebration, it wasn’t too exciting, but it wasn’t at all bad. I went to church for a while, but ended up watching the new years countdown on TV.
These two short weeks sure went by way too fast, and next week will come to me as a slap in the face, as there is no staying up until 1 in the morning and getting up around 10 during the school week. I’m Kind of ready to get back into the normal routine, but at the same time not looking forward to the work.
That about wraps up this post. I hope you all had a great new year.
thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. I enjoyed doing the 26th episode of the pod cast on Sunday. In fact, I’m still addicted to the game I demonstrated therein. More details on that in a later post.